


Coronach

by eldritcher



Series: The Heralds of Dusk [14]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 06:51:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4010035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritcher/pseuds/eldritcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Orome attacks Formenos. Galadriel pays a visit to Aule and Yavanna.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coronach

The gates of Aulë swung open and she rode in. She had never visited these lands before. Aulë’s craft had not interested her even at the peak of her curiosity.

“Artanis!” 

“Yavanna,” she acknowledged quietly before dismounting and walking forth to where Yavanna stood.

“I must see Aulë,” she said plainly. 

“We shall have no part of this,” Yavanna replied, her voice liltingly sad. “My flowers are stained by the blood of the Quendi and the soil weeps crimson into Ulmo’s streams.”

Galadriel wondered why the mention of blood and crimson failed to stir her heart. She reflected ironically that she had become inured to those words and what they symbolised. 

“I need to see Aulë,” she repeated. “I did not come for aid.”

“Then what errand do you have with Aulë?” Yavanna enquired.

“Let her come in,” Aulë’s deep voice called out from the mansion.

Galadriel nodded to Yavanna and ascended the steps leading into Aulë’s chambers. Here once Sauron had lived as advisor to the Vala. Here Fëanor had learnt his craft. Here Celebrimbor had come as an emissary from Formenos and here had the first buds of his friendship with Sauron bloomed. 

“Ulmo’s neutrality has allowed you to reach the shore,” Aulë remarked. “Fortune seems to favour you.”

“The wise leave nothing to fortune,” she said quietly. “You know that, Aulë.”

“What is your errand with me?” he deflected the question.

“Ignorance does not become you,” she murmured.

His eyes gleamed in the dim firelight from the hearth and she said crisply, “I have no time to spare. Mairon was sold to Melkor with your knowledge. However subtle the broker might have been, it could not have happened without your knowing. He was your most skilled worker, after all.”

“Those are speculations on old tragedies. What bearing do they have on matters to hand? War rages, Artanis!”

“Tulkas is dead!” called out the messengers riding into Aulë’s courtyard. “Tirion stands!”

Aulë’s eyes flickered with an indiscernible emotion before he leant across his desk to face Galadriel.

“He is not dead,” she said quietly. “Only one of your kind can slay a Vala.”

Aulë’s lips curved in a grudging smile of admiration before he said in a harsh voice, “Disembodied and weakened, perhaps. A respite in the gardens of Irmo will revive him. Did you think that our kind can be slain so easily? Only a distortion of Eru’s symphony can undo our making and fabric.” 

“You agreed to turn a blind eye to Mairon’s plight because you desired to save your friend, my uncle.”

Aulë did not reply. But the fingers he had been tapping against his desk went still and she knew she had struck well and true.

“You cannot confront him,” he said finally. “Nienna failed to win in her sanctum.”

“I notice that you wear a brooch that was crafted by my uncle,” she continued. “You saved him once. But what of the voice that plagued him till his end? His men say that he went insane because of the voice. I know nothing of that. But I do know that dreams bought him death. Indis saw and told me. Dreams touched him before Nerdanel did.”

“Artanis,” Aulë began wearily.

“A distortion of Eru’s symphony,” she murmured. “How did he achieve that with not one of you noticing?”

“Ulmo felt the dissonance and rushed to Taniquetil. But we were too late.” He shook his head pensively. “The distortion was delicately wrought with merit given to cruelty. Nienna suffered before she died.”

“Dreams cannot make or unmake Eru’s symphony,” Galadriel swept to her feet and met Aulë’s gaze. “To force the concerto into an aria without anyone knowing, that is impossible. Irmo did not change the composition.”

 

He had sent his vassals to gather the dead spirits. It was usually a task he took upon himself. But he had been troubled.

The halls of Mandos lay to the north of the mountains. Cold they were and forbidden those who lived. Here Nienna had often come to seek his company before they had been irrevocably estranged by the question of allegiances. The house of Finwë, Námo reflected bitterly, had torn apart families even amongst the Valar. After their estrangement, Námo had missed her and would often correspond with her vassals. But after the end of the First Age on Arda, she had withdrawn to her high tower overlooking the uttermost western seas and no longer deigned to take apprentices.

 

They had been called to the Mahánaxar, to pass judgement on Glorfindel. 

“I believe that you were hoodwinked by a sorcerer. It led you to rash choices and kinslaying. What have you to say for yourself?”

“Mairon did not hoodwink me!” proclaimed the defiant soul.

“The Void awaits you,” Manwë said harshly.

“There I shall wait for him!”

“Manwë.” It was Nienna. “His only mistake was that he listened to his heart. Greater wills have succumbed to the same mistake.” Her eyes lingered over Varda who belied no emotion at the unspoken accusation. 

“Then let him repent!” Manwë said. “Foreswear the sorcerer and you will be given peace in Námo’s halls.”

Námo had no stake in this. Dispassionately, he watched as Glorfindel refused the choice Manwë had given him.

“I will take the Void than chancing the least tarnish to the love I bear him.” 

“Brave!” Irmo had remarked then. “Manwë, I second Nienna. Only, let us send him back to his lover. Even you, Laurefindë, will agree that he needs to be destroyed. We forgive you your heart if you will swear that you shall spare nothing to destroy him.” He paused and silence rung ominously in the chamber. With a thoughtful smile, he continued, “As an added incentive, we promise you eternal repose with your lover in the halls of Námo when you come after your task is done.”

“The sorcerer belongs in the Void!” Nienna had exclaimed.

“I thought you wished to save Laurefindë?” Irmo asked coolly.

“Returning one of the Quendi re-embodied after death; that is not written in the symphony of Eru,” Tulkas had said thoughtfully.

“We must acknowledge that Laurefindë’s heart runs in a direction contrary to Eru’s symphony,” Irmo said in the most suave of tones. 

“You will release Mairon into the halls of Námo? You will not condemn him to the Void if I were to destroy him?” Glorfindel asked shakily. “I need your word.”

“I am not your deceitful sorcerer, Laurefindë,” Irmo said. “My word is bond.”

“We need to allow him time for contemplation of this course of action before we return him to Arda,” Varda said.

“Indeed,” Irmo nodded, “and I welcome him to the gardens of Lórien.”

Only Nienna had disagreed. But as Manwë had allowed her a victory in the case of Melian, she was forced to concede to Irmo’s dictate. Námo did not understand why Nienna despised their brother. 

So Glorfindel was sent to the gardens of Lórien where he spent time contemplating his choices. When he returned, his eyes had faded to the lightest sea-green and he seemed changed in ways more than one.

 

Námo sighed and walked to the weaving chamber where his wife was usually to be found. To his surprise the door was open and the chamber empty of its occupant. Rarely did Vairë leave her station. Even at the councils of the Valar, she entrusted Námo to speak in her stead and would remain behind. In fact, he realised, he had never entered this chamber when she had not been present.

The novelty of it made him take a step further into the chamber. Looms of fabric lay next to the spindles and incomplete tapestries cluttered the floor. Curiosity made him bend over and inspect the closest tapestry and he inhaled sharply. With a hurried gait, he left the chamber and fled his halls, making for the lands of Aulë.

 

“He weaved dissonance into the song!” Aulë exclaimed as he finally understood what Galadriel had been trying to tell him.

“Aulë! We have been compromised!” said Námo as he entered Aulë’s study in quick, long strides. He paused when he saw the woman standing before Aulë.

“You-” he began, at a loss for words.

“I must take my leave,” she said calmly. “I am sure that you can tell him the tale of how you were cuckolded by your brother without my presence here.”

“You knew?” Námo demanded. “All these days, you knew, and you did not tell us! My sister is no more because of your wilful silence!”

“Ironic how you cannot countenance a dear one’s passing when you deal death to the Quendi without the least of qualms.”

“Artanis,” Aulë cut in. “What do you intend to do?”

He saw the quiet indecision in her eyes then before it was hastily covered by cool nonchalance. 

“You cannot falter now,” Námo murmured. 

“If we broach a parley,” Aulë suggested. “Varda may be able to persuade Manwë.”

“Since she has not strived to persuade him all these years, I hardly think that she will start doing so now,” Galadriel remarked. “I need to leave. Tirion will not fall now that Tulkas has been weakened considerably. I must reach Formenos.”

“Oromë has the city under siege,” Námo told her. “He will have no compunctions at all to slay you before the city walls.”

“Have you not sought my death?” she asked quietly. 

“Death is a release,” he replied in a thoughtful tone. “I claim no compassion for your causes or for Varda’s folly. But I have never refused those who prayed for death.”

“You refused my cousin,” she said as she drew herself to her full height. “He rotted on the Thangorodrim and you refused him.”

“I did not.” Námo hesitated and met Aulë’s shocked gaze before continuing, “He fought death even when it was inevitable, Artanis. He did not call out to me from the Thangorodrim. Yes, he implored mercy of Varda, he implored Estë to take pity on him, he implored even Manwë. But not once did he call out to me. When his body failed and death began its embrace of his soul, Mairon dragged him back from my halls. And what followed was centuries of life prolonged by any and all means he could think of. He summoned me at the end, when he clutched the Silmaril to his breast and stood fighting vertigo at the edge of a chasm.”

Galadriel clasped the edge of the desk and examined her whitened knuckles. 

“I am not made of pity, Artanis,” Námo said. “But even I care not to see a man suffering more in life than he would in death.”

“Even if the death did lead to the Void?” 

“What makes you think that he would have been harmed more in the Void than he was in life? What makes you think that you will need to endure more after death than you endured in life? The Valar have no power in the Void, Artanis. You will know neither warmth nor light there. Non-existence.”

“And you claim that non-existence is a better fate than life itself?” Galadriel queried.

“In your case, yes,” Námo said plainly, his eyes taking on the uncomfortable hue of an emotion she despised.

“Those who fear to live should have never been born. Pity us not.”

 

“She had not forgiven her daughter. She had not stopped mourning her father. Torn as she was between filial grief, hatred for her father’s killer, duty to her people and the love she yet bore her wretched daughter, I am not surprised that she preferred to end her life than stand witness to another kinslaying.”

Glorfindel’s words proved futile in calming Finarfin’s guilt. 

“I should have done something!” the King exclaimed. “Eärwen lived alone, deprived of father, brothers, sons, daughter and husband; all because I was coward enough to stain my daughter’s hand with her grandfather’s blood!”

“Your daughter saved you from dying at Olwë’s hands,” Glorfindel reasoned. “Was that not her choice to make?”

“Laurefindë! What choice do you think she had? It was impulse and not reason that led her then. What have I condemned her to? What did I condemn Eärwen to?”

“Hush!” Elrond interjected. “The ceremony begins.”

The lament of the soldiers wound its strains about the requiem sung by the women. Elrond blindly let his hand seek Erestor’s stiff shoulder and clasped down. Thranduil Oropherion had cremated his father on the vales of Morannon. He had cremated Anoriel before Dol Guldur. 

“Ernil nîn,” Thalion murmured as he helped Thranduil into the white robes. “Your head wound worries me. I must insist that you surrender to Melian’s advice and stay away from warfare.”

“You worry too much, as always,” Thranduil replied without rancour. “They need me to fight, Thalion. Glorfindel has been reckless and the men fear to follow his lead. Círdan has never proved a leader. Until Celeborn arrives, it falls to the rest of us to keep the men mustered. I have little faith in Finarfin.”

“You have faith in Celeborn?” Thalion asked wryly. “He is as fickle as the moon, Ernil nîn.”

“While I admit that Galadriel’s faith in him is merely another indicator of her questionable mental soundness, I certainly have trust Celeborn when it comes to the battlefield. He knows to lead. Even Gil-Galad had accepted that.”

“Why are you staring at my shoulder?” Thalion enquired curiously. 

“War drives my libido higher,” Thranduil remarked. “I had the sudden urge to bite down on your shoulder.”

Thalion chuckled and shook his head as he inspected the wound on his charge’s head. He strode forth to open the curtains so that he could see the wound in a better light. The dawn rays blazed through and he smiled as he was taken back in time. Thranduil would cremate Gildor when the lamentation ended. But Thalion would distract him from the present as devoutly as he could.

“Come and watch the sunrise with me, Ernil nîn,” he called.

Thranduil complied and as they stood together, Thalion could not help bringing his gaze fondly to the son of his dearest friend. The handsome face remained unaffected by time, but the hard set of the jaw betrayed age and loss. Thalion looked at the calm mien and suppressed a sigh. Opaque green eyes were wide and focussed as they gazed east.

Thalion’s heart paused for an instant and he gasped. 

“The sun remains the sun,” Thranduil muttered. “I may not see it, but I feel the warmth on my skin.”

“Ernil nîn!” Thalion said in high, stricken tone.

The lamentation ended and Thranduil left the chamber. Thalion watched, benumbed, as Thranduil negotiated the steps and picked his way to the raised pyre without betraying the least of misgivings, every stride marked by the arrogant confidence that Thalion knew was inherited from the Noldorin blood that ran in Thranduil’s veins. Elrond had come to Thranduil’s side and was dispensed with a curt refusal. Elrond did not turn away though, too used to proud men and their unvoiced limitations. And in the next instant, Thranduil whispered something to him and Thalion flinched on seeing the naked grief on Elrond’s features. Elrond’s hand came to clasp Thranduil’s right hand and placed it on the corpse’s forehead. Thalion turned his eyes away before he had to witness Thranduil’s expression.

When he dared look again, Elrond had passed a burning torch to Thranduil and there was not an instant’s hesitance before the pyre was lit. 

The prince in Thranduil had died with his father. The compassion in him had died with Anoriel. The zest for life had been sapped by long years of endurance under evil’s shadow. Thalion wondered miserably what remained in the shell of a man Gildor had been forced to abandon. The verdant green eyes had lost their sight. And they claimed that the eyes were windows into the soul.

“Make way for the King! Make way!” heralds shouted and Thalion’s eyes flicked to the horsemen who wound their way through the crowds.

“Ingwë!” Finarfin was saying. 

 

Ingwë had ridden east with a paltry escort after hearing tidings of the ship’s safe docking at Alqualondë. His son’s soldiers were fleeing scatter-minded and spoke of Tulkas’s fall. After assuring himself that his son remained unharmed and whole though badly shaken, he had hastened to Tirion to seek the one he had craved to see for years unnumbered. 

And then he saw him standing by the lit pyre.

“Ingwë,” Elrond murmured under his breath. 

Thranduil concentrated on the blistering heat of the flames and the pungent scent of the dead flesh burning. He had never thought of death in terms of this nauseating stench before. Then he felt trembling hands forcing him gently around and the next he knew, he was dragged into the embrace of a man whose thudding heart betrayed a hundred emotions.

 

“Ada,” he had asked once. “Can I see my mother’s portrait?”

“There exists none on this side of the sea,” Oropher had said simply. 

“How did she look like?” Thranduil asked, torn between desperate curiosity and the need to spare his father.

“She resembled her grandfather,” Oropher had replied pensively. “They say she took after him in mien and mind. When you sail west, you will see him, and in him you will see her.”

 

“Lord Ingwë,” he said quietly. “Thranduil Oropherion at your service.”

 

“They say that they have found tack in the royal stables,” Veryo informed Maglor. “And arrows in the armouries.”

“I come,” Maglor said and together they made their way to the inner perimeter of the city. He did not need Veryo’s murmured directions as to the path, for each flagstone and tree he knew as vividly as he had once known the corridors of the castle at Himring.

The arrows were wrapped in coarse fabric. Curufin, Maglor remembered with a pang. Curufin had decreed that weaponry be preserved from exposure to the elements. Curufin had often harangued Maglor who did not care in the least for such concerns. 

“Cannons would be of use,” Veryo was saying. 

“My father loathed them,” Maglor remarked. “He called them unrefined and unworthy of being used by our people. I doubt you will find any within the city.”

“Unrefined perhaps,” Veryo admitted. “But raw power is seldom refined. The walls of the hidden city and the dockyards of Sirion were brought down by cannons.” He shook his head. “We cannot conjure them out of thin air. Then there is little purpose dwelling on them.”

The word ‘conjure’ sat ill with Maglor. He carefully inspected the arrow heads before nodding approval and preparing to leave.

“Distribute them to the archers. I will take a look at the tack and then the granaries.”

“The granaries are of little avail to us, milord. Wild berries shall be our war rations.”

“Then ensure that the berries are not poisonous. I saw a litter of cats in the courtyard of one of the houses we passed. Feed them the berries.”

Veryo’s eyes turned wide and he said quietly, “We cannot poison mute animals.”

Maglor’s cold gaze dared him to voice another word of protest. Veryo nodded his head and returned his attention to the arrows. After Maglor had left, he drew out a handful of wild berries from his satchel and ate them. They tasted bitter and they left him thirsty. But he was alive.

 

“Celeborn!” Elrond hailed as he saw the leader of the host. 

“Where is she?” Erestor asked Celeborn immediately after conveying him into the palace of Tirion.

“She had to leave,” Celeborn said simply. 

“I told you not to-” Erestor began in incredulity.

“But she had to leave,” Celeborn repeated patiently, as if the reasoning should be evident even to a small child.

“Celeborn of Doriath,” Glorfindel told Finarfin. 

“I have met him during the War of Wrath,” Finarfin replied before coming to greet Celeborn.

Erestor muttered to Celeborn, “Your explanation is unlikely to win favour with her father.”

“She remained behind in Alqualondë?” Nerdanel asked Celeborn concernedly. 

“Remaining behind was never one of her strengths,” Celeborn began cautiously. “I have the fullest confidence in the fact that-”

“Where is Artanis?” Finarfin asked and Celeborn met Erestor’s gaze.

“She decided to seek Ulmo’s counsel,” Erestor lied through his teeth. 

Elrond’s eyebrows shot up a fraction and Celebrían frowned. They knew him too well to not detect his falsehood despite his natural flair for lying smoothly.

“Yes,” Celeborn picked up in his most reassuring tone. “I give you my word of honour that she is safe.”

She was. He was confident. Her reassurance flooded his mind and he could not help a relieved sigh.

Finarfin nodded and then took Nerdanel’s hand before leading her into the next chamber where the war council was convened. Glorfindel followed and so did Celebrían. That left Celeborn with Elrond and Erestor.

“Charlatan,” Erestor accused. 

Celeborn affected a scandalised glare before swaggering into the next chamber as if he owned the place. Elrond suppressed a wry smile before following him. 

 

Estë heard Vairë’s quiet voice from the next chamber. 

“Artanis suspects. Why else would she make for the land of Aule?”

“My brother knows,” replied Irmo. 

Vairë’s exclamation of shock was quickly subdued by what Estë knew was a languorous kiss and Irmo said reassuringly, “His hands are tied. Fear nothing.”

 

Maglor crinkled his nose at the stench of damp hay. Celegorm could live in stables, he reflected. So could Aredhel. They had loved horses and would groom them with the meticulous care that another might accord a lover. Maglor had not understood it. He had preferred stable hands to manage his mounts and to keep them fed and watered. In fact, he realised, he had seldom cause to enter the stables at all. He waved the flickering torch impatiently in the air so that it flamed brighter. Then he began inspecting the tack neatly piled against a stable wall. 

 

“You did what you had to. I shall be fine,” he whispered, though his eyes were lustrous and haunted. “Now, away. I must ride to Valmar as fast as I can.”

“Can you-?” the frightened lad bit off the rest of his question and wrung his hands in the air.

The other man paled, but managed to reply in a tone nearly approaching composure. “I have never been in such a situation. But I daresay need overcomes pain.”

They parted and the man walked with a clumsy gait to the door that led out of the mansion across the terrace to the stables. After crossing half the way, he stopped and looked back. Droplets of blood marked his progress. He clasped his fingers and turned away, hastening to the stables. The horses had all fled. He had not come there to find himself a steed. He had come to find courage and composure.

He waited until he was assured that the others had left the mansion before unlacing his robes and letting them pool at his feet. With a curse, he stepped into the dirty trough placed for the horses and tried to clean himself as thoroughly as he could. His hands came besmeared with blood and he braced a palm on the stable wall before pushing in a wad of torn fabric against the bleeding vessels. 

Then he threw on his robes and rushed out of the stables. In the middle of the terrace stood the statue of a woman and in its shadow was placed his sword.

“Indis,” he whispered as his hand closed around the hilt. 

Now that he had his sword, he had no reason to enter the mansion again. He had been sure that his sanity would not bear the evidence on the hard cold floors where he had endured Melkor’s cruelty. Absurdly relieved, he leant his forehead against the feet of the statue and let the coldness of marble soothe him. Ravens cawed a lament as his tears fell upon the stone.

 

“Oromë attacks! Archers!” 

Veryo’s cry penetrated the invisible battlefield in Maglor’s mind and the solid grasp of another’s will on him weakened.

Maglor broke free from the vision with a shuddering gasp and blanched as he saw the faint brown outline of a palm against the stable wall. The palm of a right hand. 

The screeches of the owls roosting in the stables mingled with Veryo’s shouts, and Maglor whispered, “Coronach.”

 

Notes:  
Coronach - a hymn of mourning composed as a memorial to a dead person.


End file.
